


Guilt is a Pain in the Butt

by rosewiththorns



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Colorado Avalanche, Disappointment, Discipline, Friendship, Gen, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Sexual Submission, Pittsburg Penguins - Freeform, Self-Loathing, Spanking, mentoring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 06:30:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5698453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosewiththorns/pseuds/rosewiththorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The 2015-2016 season isn't going how Sidney or Matt had planned. It's up to Mario and Patrick to pull them out of their ruts. Written per reader request.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guilt is a Pain in the Butt

Guilt is a Pain in the Butt

“I can’t figure out which sucks more,” Matt confided to Sid as he transferred his cell from his right ear to his left mainly because it gave him something to do with his hands, which were damp and jumpy as toads. He knew he wasn’t supposed to talk about team issues outside of the dressing room, but he had never been one to lock his lips and throw out the rusty key, so he figured sharing outside the conference wouldn’t bite him in the ass unless he and Sid met in the Stanley Cup Finals, which at this juncture seemed only slightly more probable than an Edmonton-Buffalo Final, and if he didn’t talk he would go more insane than he already was. “This season or me. Maybe the press should conduct a poll about it.” 

“You don’t suck.” Sid’s snort cackled through the wireless connection. “Perhaps you struggle with inconsistency, but when you’re on, you’re on fire.” 

“But maybe my inconsistencies are the reason my team can’t be successful on a regular basis.” Matt nibbled on his lip as he expressed his darkest fear: that he was not only failing his team but also the reason why his team was failing. 

“There are more people on the team than just you,” Sid reminded him. “A team isn’t going to be successful just relying on one or two people to do everything. If there’s one thing Geno and I have learned in our time in the NHL, it’s that.” 

“I want to be the person my team can rely on to be successful.” Matt switched the phone from ear to ear again, because his body just couldn’t be still when his soul was in turmoil. 

“We all do.” Sid emitted a sound suspiciously similar to a sigh. “That’s the ideal, but nobody can live up to it, so should we really be beating ourselves up for falling short of some impossible standard?” 

“Nope.” Matt’s teeth ripped off a strip of broken skin from his lip, and the metallic tang of blood tingled his tongue. “That doesn’t stop me from doing it, though. You know how I struggle with my self-loathing. No one can hate me like I do.” 

“I also suffered from self-loathing this season,” Sid said so softly that Matt assumed he must have misheard, because it would have made more sense for an alien invasion from Mars to be announced than for Sid to admit to hating himself. 

“What?” gasped Matt, wondering how the best player in the world could wrestle with the pervading sense of inadequacy that dominated Matt’s mind all too much of the time, blotting out joy as a cloud blocked out the rays of sunlight. 

“I hated myself most of the season.” Sid’s wry grin could be heard in the twisted edge of his words. “Mario helped me snap out of it a bit, and I think I’m playing better and more focused now.” 

“How’d he snap you out of it?” Matt arched an eyebrow although he was well-aware that Sid couldn’t see him. “A pep talk?” 

“Nah.” Sid coughed, and Matt promised himself that he would fly to Pittsburg to punch the snot out of Sid if he had a cold contagious by cell phone and Matt caught it. “He didn’t say much, but what he did was very stern, actually.” 

“Oh.” Matt couldn’t prevent a smirk from curving across his mouth. “What’d he do, huh? Waggle his finger and scold you with an ‘I’m so disappointed in you’ look?” 

“Wrong again.” Sid cleared his that with a noise like gravel banging around a tin can. “He—er—spanked me.” 

At first, Matt was so astonished by this revelation that the smirk evaporated from his face, but a second later, as it occurred to him that nobody in their right mind—and it was Mario’s body, not his brain, that was fading—would spank Sidney Crosby, he chortled, “Yeah, right. Did he also put you in timeout and wash your mouth out with soap?” 

“You can laugh.” Sid sounded so miffed that Matt had to believe his bizarre claim. “It wasn’t your ass that was the butt of the joke.” 

“But what made him spank you?” Wary of offending Sid further, Matt posed this prying question as delicately as he could. “What happened?” 

“It’s a long story…” With that preamble, Sid began to tell the tale: 

Sidney had been curled up on the bed in the guest room where Mario had invited him to sleep during this visit to Mario’s mansion, sulking because the season was going to hell in a hand-basket. The Penguins’ offensive woes were so the terrible that the Devils with their neutral zone trap seemed like an offensive juggernaut, and, speaking of the Devils, instead of being in the Matthews sweepstakes, they were keeping ahead of the Penguins in the wild card race.

The door creaking open startled him out of his gloomy contemplation of Pittsburg’s dire status in the Metropolitan Division and wild card race. Scowling at Mario, who was crossing the threshold, Sidney grumbled, “You could knock. I had the door shut for a reason.” 

“So you could sulk.” With a decisive click, Mario close the door behind him. 

“I’m not sulking,” snapped Sidney, glaring at Mario as he sat down on the bed beside Sidney, sinking the mattress with his weight. His cheeks flaming as if a match had been rubbed against them, he imagined how the media would blow this little spat into World War III if they got wind of it, and the masses, relishing gore, would lap up the fake blood in bushels. 

“You’re doing a damn fine imitation of it.” Mario grabbed Sidney’s shoulders and shook. 

“Fuck off.” Sidney, stiffening instinctually at the unexpected and undesired physical contact, and jerking out of Mario’s clasp. “I want to be alone.” 

“You weren’t invited over here so you could be alone, because being alone isn’t good for you when you’re in of these brooding moods.” Mario grasped Sidney’s shoulders so firmly that Sidney sensed it would be futile to fight. “Now stop acting like a brat and come downstairs because there’s a family of people who want to see you, or I’ll spank you.” 

“I don’t want to see them.” Sidney’s jaw tightened as he thought that Mario must be getting desperate to win the argument if he was resting to what had to be a sick joke or hollow threat. After all, Mario couldn’t spank him. He wasn’t a rookie, and, even when he had been, Mario had never punished him in that manner. 

“Do you want to be spanked?” Raising an eyebrow, Mario shook Sidney’s shoulders again. 

“No.” Sidney rolled his eyes. “But you can’t spank me.” 

“Why not?” Mario’s tone suggested that this question didn’t have an answer so obvious a mole could see it from a mile away. 

“I’m not your rookie any more.” Sidney lifted his chin. “You can’t just spank me because I won’t do exactly what you tell me.” 

“You’ll always be my rookie.” Mario’s eyes were affectionate, but his voice was stern as a coach announcing a bag skate. “Now will you come downstairs and join the family?” 

“For the last time, no.” Sidney shook his head, thinking that he would prefer to spend his remaining time alive in a shameful solitude rather than face the world with his failure. 

“Then you’ll have to come here,” pronounced Mario grimly as a judge sentencing a criminal to lethal injection. Before Sidney could escape, Mario’s hands slid down to clutch Sidney’s elbows in an iron grip. 

As he landed over Mario’s lap with enough force to propel the oxygen from his lungs, Sidney, kicking at Mario’s ankles, protested, “You said I’m like a son to you. How can you do this?” 

“I’m doing this because you’re like a son to me.” Mario tugged Sidney’s pants down to his knees, so Sidney couldn’t kick any more and pressed a palm against Sidney’s heaving back to keep him in position as the other started to rain smacks on Sidney’s upturned hindquarters.  
“Now explain to me why you are so hell-bent on being alone with your misery.” 

“Because I suck.” Sidney gritted his teeth at a particularly sharp swat. “I didn’t want to infect everyone else, and I need to be alone to figure out what the fuck is wrong with me.” 

“Sucking isn’t contagious.” Mario emphasized this declaration with a series of searing slaps. “Your problem isn’t some physical ailment. It’s all mental. You’re giving up where you used to persevere. You are folding in on yourself where you once stood up. That’s not the spirit of Sid the Kid all of Pittsburg fell in love with, and you know it.” 

“Sid the Kid is grown up.” Sidney muffled a sob by lifting a clenched first to his quivering lip. “He’s figured out that most fights can’t be won, especially if he’s standing by himself.” 

“Sid the Kid is plying hide-and-seek and just doesn’t want to be found.” Mario was spanking with more fervor than ever, and Sidney inwardly cursed his underwear for providing scant protection from Mario’s punishing palm. “Hint: he’s still inside you if you want to pull him out into the daylight again.” 

“I want to be the Sid the Kid everyone fell in love with.” Tears trickled down Sidney’s cheeks, and he swiped them away with the cuff of his sleeve. “I just don’t know how to be.” 

“Stop trying to be perfect.” Mario delivered a final swat before restoring Sidney’s jeans to their proper location. 

Sidney was too busy trying to resume a normal breathing pattern instead of snuffling to respond to this statement or voice any argument when Mario slung an arm around him and wrapped him against his chest so that Sidney could hear his heart beating like gentle background music. 

Too bone-tired to twist out of Mario’s hold, Sidney murmured, “Did you spank me to make me feel like a child again, Mario?” 

“That depends.” Eyes gleaming, Mario tapped Sidney’s nose. “Did it work?” 

“Maybe a little.” Sidney’s mouth quirked into a sheepish grin. 

“Good.” Mario brushed a kiss across Sidney’s forehead. “The Christmas cookies downstairs will make you feel even more like a child.” 

Matt listened to Sidney’s story in silence except for the occasional gasp of astonishment and when it ended he remained quiet for a moment before prodding awkwardly, “So the spanking, um, worked for you then?” 

“I think so.” Sid seemed almost defensive. “If you don’t believe me, test it for yourself.” 

If he were sane, Matt would have replied that he was prepared to take Sid’s word for it, but, because he was crazier than a mad baboon, he asked, “Do you think it would work the same for me as it did you?” 

“There’d be only one way to find out,” Sid pointed out dryly, “and you’d have to really want to.” 

“I don’t want to be spanked.” Matt’s forehead furrowed in a frown that reflected the one on his lips. “But I don’t want to be crushed by the self-loathing and feelings that I suck, either. It’s the definition of being trapped between a rock and a hard place. Life is so unfair sometimes.” 

This dilemma continued to chip away at Matt’s mind as he finished his conversation with Sid and hung up the phone. It haunted his dreams like a ghost and distracted him like a corny chorus stuck in his head throughout practice the next day. Finally, at the conclusion of practice, he broke down and knocked on Patrick’s office door. 

“What wrong, Duchy?” The concern in Patrick’s eyes made it clear that he had sensed something was eating Matt as a termite infestation would devour wood. 

“Remember when you spanked me?” Matt stared as his feet, which he was shuffling back and forth as though searching for solid ground in the midst of a quagmire. 

“Yes.” Patrick tilted Matt’s chin up so their gazes—Matt’s nervous and Patrick’s bewildered—met. “Why you ask me that? Afraid I gonna whip you again?” 

“Would you?” In a breathless rush, the question exploded from Matt. “I mean, I had a piss-poor practice today—“ 

“I never spank you for bad practice.” Patrick squeezed Matt’s shoulder, as if he believed Matt was scared and in need of reassurance rather than trying to figure out how the hell to ask for a spanking. 

“Even if I wanted you to?” Matt was so humiliated by what he was saying that he wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that Patrick couldn’t hear him.

“You want me to spank you?” Cocking his head, Patrick studied Matt as if he had expressed an overwhelming, abrupt desire to pursue a career as a figure skater. 

“It’s a stupid idea.” Matt smeared the sweat from his palms onto his jeans. “I just thought that if you spanked me I might be able to stop hating myself—“ 

“I won’t let you hate yourself.” Before Matt could finish his sentence or process what was transpiring Patrick and hauled him over his lap and began lowering his pants to his knees. “Nobody on this team is permitted to hate themselves.” 

As Patrick, done tugging Matt’s jeans down to his knees, slid his fingers into the elastic of Matt’s briefs, Matt squirmed. His resistance was met with a whack on each thigh. Whimpering at the sudden sting as well as at the cool air nipping at his exposed backside as his underwear started its journey to join his pants, he pleaded, “Can’t my briefs stay in place?” 

“Do your briefs need a spanking?” Patrick’s hand hammered Matt’s bare rump. 

“No,” Matt choked out. 

“Then I won’t spank them.” Patrick was settling into a rhythm as he continued to swat Matt’s behind, which already felt as if it were going up in flames. “I’ll spank you because you need spanking. Why you need spanking?” 

“Because I asked for it,” answered Matt, convinced that he would regret doing so since Patrick seemed intent on reducing his rear to cinders. 

“Wrong.” Patrick’s smacks were so strong that Matt had to bite his tongue to squelch sobs. “I spank you because you hate yourself. Hating yourself not allowed since if you not doing your best, you just need focus on doing better, and if you doing your best, it does no good to be angry at yourself.” 

“I’m doing my best, and I still suck,” Matt cried out either from guilt or the spanking. He didn’t know and felt like he might never know anything ever again. “That’s why the team sucks.” 

“Blaming yourself for the team’s struggles means you think you bigger than the team.” Patrick’s hand tore into Matt’s blazing flesh. “The team is bigger than you and its problems bigger than you too. Understand?” 

“Yeah,” gasped Matt, because Patrick’s words and spanks had made him realize that truth. The spanking and lecture had burned it into him like a brand. 

“You better, because if you forget, I spank you again.” Patrick pulled up Matt’s jeans and underwear before adding as he stroked soothing circles into Matt’s back, “You a good kid, Duchy. We not have you hating yourself.” 

“You mean I’m not a big problem?” whispered Matt through cracked lips. 

“Of course you not big problem. You big solution.” Patrick ruffled Matt’s hair. “Now you go and act like it. Believe you are big solution, and you will be.”


End file.
